The subject matter described herein relates generally to additive manufacturing systems and, more particularly, to additive manufacturing systems including powder containment walls.
Additive manufacturing systems are essential to the production of many modern specialized components. Specifically, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) has become an essential tool for manufacturers to model and mold metal components that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive or impossible to replicate under standard metal working techniques. However, traditionally Selective Laser Melting has required a fixed container volume irrespective of the size of the component to be manufactured. As a result, the same quantity of build material is required no matter what the size of the component is. Thus, at least some have sought to make the technique more cost effective by engineering methods to minimize the building material necessary to mold a specific component. Such resource minimization techniques include constructing structures alongside the primary components to restrict the amount of powder necessary per build. However, in order to reduce the required powder necessary per build, such structures inherently require the absence of the build material on one side of their structure. This asymmetrical distribution of build material means that such structures are often susceptible to stability and structural integrity issues. Furthermore, repairing such structures can be expensive, time consuming, and result in material contamination of the build environment.